Outreachy/Administrators

Read below the responsibilities of Wikimedia's organization administrator in various phases of the Outreachy program.

Note: Outreachy takes place twice a year and contents on this page follow the timeline of the two previous rounds which might be different next year, but the process of the program will more or less remain the same.

Before the application period

late December - middle of February / late July - end of September

1. Recruit two organization administrators. As the timeline and process of both Google Summer of Code and Outreachy summer round are similar and require coordination, it's recommended to have the same administrators organizing them. 
2. Sign up your organization to participate in the program here.
3. Create a milestone in Phabricator under Outreachy project and copy and adjust the milestone description from the previous Outreachy round. (Request permissions to create milestones if you don't have already.)
4. Request to be added to the restricted Phab group Outreachy-mentors by asking one of its members to add you. Once you receive the permissions, add mentors to this group and restrict access to all featured project tasks to it. This step is important as the recent changes in the Outreachy application process requires keeping the featured tasks hidden from the applicants until the application period begins.
5. Select ideas for possible projects from the outreach-programs-projects workboard or by reaching out to mentors on the mailing lists. See example here. Task description of chosen projects should meet the listed criteria.
6. Ensure all mentors have signed up on the Outreachy site and uploaded their project descriptions.
7. Create Outreachy/Round_XX subpage on MediaWiki.org only after the application period begins. Add ideas for possible projects, administrators contact information, and link to the application process steps.
8. Add latest round to Template:GSoC
9. Subscribe to the Outreachy mentors mailing list to receive announcements, program updates and applicant queries. Remember to set a filter for lists.outreachy.org to ensure it ends up in your personal inbox.
10. Participate in the Outreachy Twitter chat to answer applicants queries. 

OPTIONAL: Host an information session for applicants For one of the previous rounds, we used YouTube for the live broadcast and IRC for a simultaneous discussion. See more details. 

Application period

Before the deadline: middle of February - end of March / end of September - beginning of November

1. Make all the project tasks in the Phabricator public via: "Edit Task" and then changing the "Visible To" field to "Public".
2. Suggest next steps in the process to both interns and mentors. Make sure interns follow both the official and Wikimedia's application process guidelines. Remind mentors to review intern proposals on Phabricator and give them feedback.  
3. Answer interns and mentors queries. They might approach you via various communication mediums (emails, Phabricator, IRC). Be prompt in your replies.
4. Provide a group communication tool to interns and mentors In the few recent rounds, we have encouraged the use of Zulip for Q&A; check one of the previous streams.

OPTIONAL: Review student applications. Verify that students have followed all the application process steps.

• Provide relevant feedback on the applications -- Ideally, 1-2 weeks before the deadline, so that students have time to work on the feedback.
• If there isn't enough time for the student to work on your feedback (or to create a new proposal), leave a comment stating that their chances of getting accepted are low. A sample comment:

   Welcome! Thanks for your interest in this project. The Outreachy application deadline is in ~2.5 hours, which isn't quite sufficient to complete our application process, so I'd like to frankly let you know that your chances of acceptance are very slim. But, we do understand that the application process is a good learning experience, so if you still wish to draft a proposal, we'd be happy to support you. You can also contribute to Wikimedia besides these programs. If you're interested, we can share some resources with you on getting started. 

After the deadline: end of March - beginning of May / beginning of November - end of November

1. Ask mentors to review applications. Encourage them to follow the selection process tips and update the score in the Outreachy's system.
2. Announce results on Wikitech-I & Wikimedia-I mailing lists once they are out. You could also send emails to accepted participants & congratulate them. See email examples one, two. 
3. Organize tasks in Phabricator, decline proposals not accepted (via "Add Action… 🡒 Change Status" plus add a comment "This proposal unfortunately did not get accepted, hence declining this task"; you could save some time by batch editing these tasks), move the accepted proposals to an appropriate column on the workboard of the corresponding Outreachy round.

OPTIONAL: Send emails to rejected participants. Encourage them to continue contributing outside of Outreachy and re-apply the following round. See example messages.

Internship period

end of May - end of August / beginning of December - beginning of March

1. Engage interns in your community. Prepare a list of small tasks to help interns get familiar with the community practices and processes. See example here. 
2. Suggest next steps in the process to both interns and mentors. Encourage interns to write weekly reports, work towards accomplishing milestones in their project timeline, communicate regularly with mentors, and submit evaluations on time. Encourage mentors to continue providing guidance to interns during this time. 

OPTIONAL:

• Host IRC chats or video meetups with interns. Allow interns to learn and share their work with fellow participants and request feedback. 
• Share interns' weekly reports with the community. See example here.

Wrap-up

end of August - late September / beginning of March - late April

1. Suggest next steps in the process to both interns and mentors. Ensure no pull requests are remaining to be merged and deployed in production and documentation both on-wiki and in the code is complete.  
2. Archive the corresponding "Round" milestone project in Phabricator (select "Manage" in the left bar and select "Archive Project" on the right).
3. Update Outreachy/Round_XX subpage on MediaWiki.org: Add {{historical}} on top. Remove "Stay up to date with the progress on projects through the bi-weekly reports of interns" from top and move to "Accepted projects" section. Potentially summarize the round on top instead.
4. Add this round's projects to Outreachy/Past projects.

OPTIONAL:

• Write a blog post for Wikimedia blog. Include information about interns, projects they worked on, what they accomplished, etc. At the very least, announce on wikitech-l & Wikimedia-l mailing list.
• Host a lightning showcase and invite interns to share the projects they built with the community.   

Additional notes

• For the sections listed above, do not miss any emails on the Outreachy mailing list or from the program coordinators as they will contain information about important deadlines.

Resources

• Read the resources on the GNOME's Outreachy Admin's page.
• Read announcement emails and messages from Round 20.
• Read lessons learned from the previous editions.
• Read lessons learned from the GSoC 2017 edition.